Bats come around, beat 'Pigs

By Jeff Schuler

The Morning Call

July 08, 2008

Brian Mazone will get one more start before heading to Louisville Slugger Field for the Triple-A All-Star game a week from tonight.

He has to hope it goes better than his outing Tuesday night against the team that calls that stadium home.

The Bats battered Mazone in a five-run fourth inning and eased to an 8-2 win before 8,656 at Coca-Cola Park, snapping the IronPigs' three-game winning streak.

Mazone (8-7) struggled for his fourth straight start since pitching a seven-inning shutout against Buffalo on June 11. After giving up six hits and five runs -- all earned -- in five innings, Mazone now has allowed 28 hits and 15 earned runs in 222/3 innings for an ERA of 5.96 in those four starts.

The 31-year-old left-hander was perfect through three innings, striking out three. But he was shelled the second time around the order during a nightmarish fourth that saw the Bats (51-42) use five hits (including a homer, a single off the wall and two doubles to the wall), a walk and a sacrifice fly to take a 5-1 lead.

Chris Dickerson, a cousin of former NFL Hall of Famer Eric Dickerson, launched Mazone's first pitch of the inning over the 17-foot wall in right for his sixth homer, and Aaron Herr later missed his 12th (and third in 15 games since Cleveland dealt him to Cincinnati) by a few feet in the same general area.

After a double by Kevin Barker and a sacrifice fly made it 2-1, Rob Mackowiak kept the inning alive and knocked in a run with bloop single to center just in front of a charging Rich Thompson. Paul Janish then capped the inning with a two-run double off the wall in left center.

The IronPigs (37-56), who had pushed their winning percentage to over .400 for the first time in franchise history with their winning streak, had taken a 1-0 lead the previous inning on a triple by the surging Brandon Watson and Thompson's single to right. The triple was the second in three games by Watson, who is hitting .393 (11-for-28) with eight runs scored over a seven-game hitting streak.

That would be the IronPigs' only run off Daryl Thompson (4-0), a 22-year-old right-hander who just returned to Louisville after making two starts for the Reds.

Thompson, who was 3-2 with a 1.76 ERA in 10 starts at Double-A Chattanooga before getting promoted to Triple-A, scattered six hits over six innings, with two strikeouts and two walks. He even survived a 'Coca-Cola Park' double in the fifth when left fielder Michael Griffin lost Rich Thompson's one-out fly ball to left. However, Daryl Thompson retired both Mike Cervenak and Andy Tracy to get out of the inning.

Griffin later knocked in the Bats' sixth run in the seventh with a drive off the wall in front of the bullpens in left. The umpires originally called it a two-run homer, ruling that the ball hit the yellow stripe atop the wall and came back onto the field.

Television replays showed, however, that the ball hit the wall several feet below the stripe, just out of the reach of a leaping Watson. After hearing an appeal from Huppert the crew huddled and reversed the decision but denied Huppert's argument that Griffin, who had slowed to a trot between second and third and was tagged, should be out, placing him instead at second.

Louisville, which had won six of seven before dropping its last three games, added their final runs in the ninth off Steve Green on Luis Bolivar's two-run double. Doubles by Jason Jaramillo and Mike Rouse produced the IronPigs' final run in the bottom of the inning.

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